From December 16, 2011 to February 12, 2012 – Art Museum Meilahti
The exhibition showcases new acquisitions of the Helsinki Art Museum from 2007 to 2011. In the past five years, the museum has acquired almost 400 works for its collection, over 50 of which are featured in this show. The museum also augments its collection by commissioning public artworks that are sited in parks, for example. Under the Percent for Art programme, works are also acquired for new buildings such as day-care centres, schools and hospitals. Around 40 per cent of the collection of the Helsinki Art Museum is permanently on exhibit in various municipal offices and institutions.

There are as many topics and messages in the exhibition as there are artists and artworks. Yet there are also things in common, for many of the works address issues relating to beliefs and values. Many works refer to the tradition of Christian art and to art history in general. In the hands of contemporary artists, old subjects are given new meanings. On the other hand, many artists seize contemporary themes and offer fresh viewpoints on them. The works in the exhibition can also evoke powerful emotions in themselves, without any background information or analytical reflection.

Until the 12th of June – EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art
The exhibition of the work of the Catalonian artist Joan Miro (1893-1983) concentrates on his sculptures but also feature paintings, drawings and prints linked to the form language of the sculptures.

Alongside his fellow countryman Picasso, Joan Miró was one of the most brilliant and productive artists of the 20th century. His talents were many; he was a painter, sculptor, ceramic and textile artist who switched easily from one medium to another throughout his career. Miró’s blue, red, yellow, green and black palette have become famous through his paintings, lithographs, etchings and sculptures. Animals, plants, insects, male and female genitals, stars and comets are recurring themes in his work.

At the end of the 1920s Miró expanded the boundaries of his painting in a three-dimensional direction through compilations and collages. From the 1940s in his sculptures Miró concentrated on individual bronze and other sculptural pieces directly inspired by his surrealist paintings. The 1960s saw the birth of large outdoor sculptures and monumental public works which expressed Miro´s axiom “art is of and for people”.
As an artist Miró is an imaginative individualist, a descriptive poet. In surrealist style his work drew its inspiration from the world of dreams and the imagination although he refused to see himself as the representative of any specific art movement.

From 14 of January 2011 to 13 of March 2011 – Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma | Finnish National Gallery
Saara Ekström (b. 1965) creates innovative combinations using different techniques in her videos, photographs and installations. She is interested in natural and artificial materials that embody strong symbolic values.
This major exhibition presents a review of the artist’s wide-ranging work over the course of ten years. The charged moods in the works range from the poetic to the grotesque, from exposed to concealed. Ekström shows how familiar everyday things and objects can have a secret
life.

The themes in the works include humanity and femininity, which the artist approaches through the use of metaphors. “I like the unpredictability and surprising qualities of materials. Some of the works can become fragile or disappear, others are preserved forever. I do not use materials as an end in themselves, they support the themes I address in my work. I use them in an attempt to create a whole that is simultaneously seductive and repulsive,” Ekström says.
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